Thursday, June 2:
During the night I hear R. calling from the next room: “No one will believe how happy I am to have you for my wife.”
Yesterday morning I entered his room and he played and sang the sketch he had just made of Siegfried’s arrival in disguise at Brünnhilde’s rock. Dreadful the effect of the hero’s inhuman address to his woman, and through the large web of themes which dominates all four works a language has been created of which the world as yet knows nothing.
Lunch with the children and Herr Kietz, who leaves at 4 o’clock; his visit has not given R. much pleasure, he finds he has sunk very low in the world.
In the evening conclusion of Die Jungfrau von O. Previously we had tended to regard the episode with Lionel as a flaw in the work; this time we were quite amazed and full of admiration for it. “It is not sensual love which overcomes Joan; rather, her awesomely sacred calling has been destroyed, this is all very well motivated in the preceding scenes, by the heroes who woo her, and the whole Court life. But it is all so delicate and profound that most people are quite unable to grasp it. For them it does not exist.”
Wonderful evening in the garden at sunset—Lusch as a dairymaid; our good Herr Kietz brought the bad weather with him and has taken it away again. The scent of acacia blossoms, children at play, people moving to and fro—the sun, a dying hero, greets us all as he takes his leave.